If you’ve had the pleasure of walking into Gigi’s Cupcakes on Abercorn Street, then you know what I mean when I say you can just feel the happiness and joy in that shop.

Beautifully adorned but not a lot of frills.

The décor is great, but it is the sweet treats behind the glass that are the stars of this show — all lined up with plenty of places to go.

Bethany Shantz opened the local Gigi’s franchise in March 2011 after falling in love with them in Nashville, where she attended Vanderbilt University. They were an instant hit here in Savannah.

And Bethany was a hit from day one. She regularly worked from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the shop.

“It was my baby,” she says.

The hours didn’t faze her. How could they? A successful business owner, a newlywed with everything lined up for a happily ever after.

The bruising on her legs, though, did get her attention. A routine visit to the doctor followed.

“I had always been borderline anemic,” she told me. “My doctor assumed that was the problem.”

After a routine set of tests, she got a call back from her doctor. His tone was serious.

“He said my labs were way off and I had to come back in for a re-test,” she recalls. “I was terrified.”

The results of that second test weren’t much different. “My doctor said in all his years of medicine, schooling, residency and in his practice, he had never seen a white blood cell count that high.”

They had to double- and triple-check, he said, but if the labs were correct, then Bethany had either leukemia or lymphoma.

“I will never forget the numbness when those words came out of his mouth,” she says. “Having to call my husband home from work to tell him this news was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

“How do you tell your husband you have cancer at 28 years old?”

Another bombshell

The next day brought a visit to an oncologist at Summit Cancer Care.

While Bethany and her husband waited to be assigned a room, another bombshell dropped.

Her doctor walked in and said: “Good news is it looks like chronic leukemia, which is the best kind to have.

“Bad news is that you are pregnant.”

Bethany had no idea.

“We had been trying to have a baby for a few months, but I had no idea I was pregnant,” she explains. “We were told our sweet angel wouldn’t make it through my treatments and I would never be able to carry a child.”

What followed that tragedy was nine months of treatment.

“I was immediately started on an oral chemo pill, which I would expect to be on (fingers crossed) for the rest of my life,” she says. “Hell, yes, I was scared. There are no words to describe my fear and uncertainty.”

But remember the cupcakes?

Lost in all of this ­— and it certainly would be easy to lose sight of anything other than dealing with cancer and the loss of a child — was the fact that Bethany was a business owner. A successful business owner.

That said, she continued to work while being treated.

“Having my business helped me so much over those nine months,” she says. “I continued to go to Gigi’s almost every day for as much or as little as I could.”

She credits a great staff for keeping everything moving while she was moving rather slowly. Eventually the word got out that Bethany was sick, and as Savannah tends to do, the community rallied.

“A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t been touched by someone here in Savannah,” she tells me.

Sprinkles of hope

I knew Bethany had been battling cancer, and like everyone else, I was hoping and praying for the best.

When I found out on Facebook that she is in remission, my arms went up in the air like a ref standing at the goal line of the Super Bowl — just one of countless cheerleaders Bethany’s gathered during her journey.

She credits her father, her husband, her doctors — “the list goes on and on,” she says. “I have cellphone numbers of all the doctors and surgeons I’ve had over the last seven months.”

Everyone has done their part to see Bethany through. Now, she says, it’s time to celebrate.

Fully aware of the fact that there is no cure, she knows she will take medication for the rest of her life and will face monthly monitoring through blood work and screenings. It’s amazing, really, to see her smile after all of this. A life-changing event, but she has met it head-on and now has enough reason to celebrate the first victory in what will be a lifelong battle. On Friday, she threw a party at her cupcake shop, 5521 Abercorn St., for the whole community.

“Some days are hard, and I’ve cried,” she says, “but I have so many things to smile about and be grateful for.”

Hard to argue with that. Happy remission, Bethany, from all of us.

Jesse Blanco is a local news anchor at WTGS and host of the Emmy-nominated “Eat It and Like It,” Savannah’s only TV show dedicated to its culinary scene. Go to www.eatitandlikeit.com or email jesse@eatitandlikeit.com.